Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Author: ryan

  • Don’t wait for the New Year

    It’s the last day of the year, when a lot of people contemplate the previous year. This is also the time when many start planning on new beginnings in the new year. I say, why do we wait? Shouldn’t we be planning on new beginnings throughout the year?

    So many times when starting new initiatives at school we have this urge to wait until natural breaks, such as the start of a new school year. It feels totally natural in a school setting since we have such distinct starts and stops, unlike a lot of occupations. After college I worked a couple of years at a computer store and bank. It was weird not have such breaks. To start something new, you set the date as soon as possible.

    Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen nearly enough in a school setting.

    I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. –Harry (When Harry Met Sally)

    When I want to incorporate something new, I want it to start as soon as possible. Don’t make me wait for some arbitrary date just because we’ve always done it that way. I want the rest of my life start as soon as possible.

    Happy New Year everybody!!!

  • What a disappointing article, tablets vs. laptops

    Scholastic has posted a versus article, Laptop Vs
    Tablet    , where Gary
    Stager and Dan Brenner duel over what is the best. Both arguments are very weak.
    Mr. Stager takes the old arugment that the iPad is a consumption
    device    :

    The iPad is a consumption device. Sure, you can use it for Web browsing, video-watching, or note-taking, but the laptop affords a much greater range of expressive possibilities. Apple’s embrace of digital textbooks reinforces a quaint view of education that transfers agency from learners to publishers. The tools for creating e-books, such as iBooks Author, require Macs, but the laptop cannot read the books it creates, forcing schools to choose between textbooks and computing. Apple has made it clear that education is about content delivery and testing, no longer about the power to be your best.

    The argument is no long valid. Creation apps that I have used on my iPad include
    Codea, Pythonista, iMovie, Garageband, Elements, iA Writer, Google Drive, and
    QuickOffice. Instead of telling us why an iPad isn’t the right tool, tell us why
    a laptop is.

    On the other hand, Mr. Brenner tells us what they do on the
    iPad    . Paperless
    workflows, email, textbooks, these are some of the things they do on the
    tablets. I didn’t see anything in the list that you can’t also do on laptops. In
    fact, he ends the column with “P.S. I wrote this article on my laptop computer
    at work. It seemed like the right tool for the job!”.

    The final decision in these discussions usually boil down to:

    1. What can we afford?
    2. What can we support?
    3. What supports our teaching?

    How did your district decide?

  • Gadgets and coding core to schools

    Geeking out young: gadgets and coding need to be core in US schools

    Though many feel that there are already too many gadgets and too much internet in kids’ lives, Arboleda and One Laptop per Child have the opposite viewpoint. He said that a laptop could become a precious, transformational object for a child, taking them to new places in their personal development — especially if coupled with internet access. As for the sorry state of computer science in schools stateside, Yongpradit emphasized the need for teacher certification programs in computing, building a curriculum the same way math and sciences were: one block at a time. Arboleda took it a step further, saying that access to digital tools and internet has become “a basic human right” — severely disadvantaging those who lack them.

  • Ten ways to be average

    10 Common Characteristics of Average People writes:

    There are plenty of resources online if you want to learn how to be successful, but what about those who are only looking to achieve adequacy? If you’re shooting for the big dog pile at the bottom, here are 10 common characteristics of average people to aim for:

    Ugh, I’m very guilty for a couple of these.

  • Why public schools outperform private schools

    Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools writes:

    Would it surprise you to learn that students attending traditional, district-run public schools outperform their peers in charter schools and private schools?

    Via:@jorech via @colonelb

  • Cool Mac laptop stickers

    61 Original Macbook Stickers That Make Your Laptop Even More Awesome

    I wish I had the creativity to come up with some of these!

  • Stack Exchange has an English Language Site!

    Do you have a question about the usage of English, such as Should I put a
    comma before the last item in a
    list?    ,What
    is the correct way to pluralize an
    acronym?    ,
    or “My friends and I” vs. “My friends and me” vs. “Me and my
    friends”
    look no further than the Stack Exchange site English Language &
    Usage    .

    Stack Exchange is a collection of
    question and answer sites, with topics that range from Server
    Fault    (server administration) to Movies &
    TV     to Gardening &
    Landscaping    .

  • Great Fibonacci Numbers video

    If You Don’t Know What Fibonacci Numbers are, You Should Watch This NOW!

  • Bruce Baker wants to analyze educational reforms correctly

    Meet The @FiveThirtyEight Of Education. Bruce Baker Will Bring Sanity To Reform Hype

    Stop Cheerleading Education Miracles, i.e. Education Effects Are Small

    “We really have failed in the teaching of mathematics and probability,” decries Baker, who regularly debunks myths about unicorn policy changes that radically improve student outcomes. At scale, experiments rarely move the needle more than a few percentage points. Statisticians measure outcomes in “standard deviations”, or how students move relative to their peers.

    I’ve added his blog to my RSS reader. Unfortunately, it seems that for policy
    makers the only data that is good is data that confirms their own beliefs.

  • Giving technical presentations

    Presentation Zen: No excuse for boring an audience: Advice on giving technical presentations:

    Long before “death-by-powerpoint” or vertigo-by-prezi, there were bad presentations. Really bad presentations. So don’t blame the software. The genesis of painfully dull or muddled presentations predates the computer. No one knows this better than scientists, researchers, and academics, who have long been required to attend numerous conferences each year, conferences which typically feature a keynote speaker and scores of shorter presentations by others in their field.

    At least I rarely see bullet lists…